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Scottish Optoelectronics Activities at Laser World of Photonics 2009
The Scottish Stand at Laser World of Photonics
Scottish Optoelectronics was well represented at Laser World of Photonics 2009 Exhibition between 15th & 18th June. The Stand above financed by Scottish Development International hosted SOA and 7 Scottish companies namely CST Global; Helia; Institute of Photonics; OptoCap; Photonic Solutions; Power Photonic & Thales Optronics. In addition 11 other Scottish companies were exhibiting on their own stand or an agent’s namely Cascade Technologies; Coherent Scotland; Edinburgh Instruments; Forth Dimension Displays; Gilden Photonics; Intense; Laser Support Services; M Squared Lasers; Spanoptic; Spectrogon & Umicore. Other companies sent representatives to walk the floor. The conferences, several of which ran in parallel, attracted more Scottish delegates. The Scottish Universities were well represented with speakers and delegates but also companies attended.
The companies reported good quality contacts rather then numerous time wasters.
The exhibition itself hosted 1040 (1008:2007) exhibitors and attracted over 24,000 (26,655:2007) visitors which compared well with two years ago despite the recession. The recession however was referred to in the Market Place seminar with reports of expected downturns this year between 20% and 40% in a number of applications.
On Wednesday 17th the SOA had arranged two networking events with the German Umbrella association, OptecNet Deuchland and one of its regional members OpTecBB (Berlin & Brandenburg). At 08:00 OpTecBB hosted a breakfast Meeting of the Global Advantage Network of Berlin, Tucson, Manchester & Ottawa to which Scotland was invited as Guest. A brochure was produced giving brief company descriptions of attendees and represented an excellent networking opportunity.
At 16:00 there was a German Scottish Forum followed by a Beer and Whisky reception. At the forum 5 Scottish and 5 German companies gave 3 minute company briefs and SOA and OptecNet Deutchland gave an overview of their respective countries’ optoelectronics. Again an excellent networking opportunity and a number of companies reported making business contacts. The pictures below were taken at the German Scottish forum.
Andreas Ehrhardt (OptecNet Deutschland) and Chris Gracie (SOA) opening the forum
Etienne Friedrich presenting Power Photonic to the German Scottish Forum